Tarot Card: Death
by FiresFromOurHearts
Summary: Cedric Diggory was meant to die in a graveyard, killed by Peter Pettigrew. And he did-sort of, that is. He maybe just accidentally warped the spell so it possibly sent him to a world where he no longer exists. He can survive... maybe.


_**I am so far from happy with this, but you know what? It's done and that's where I'm going to leave it. It's going to be okay, this hurried and badly written piece. I have time constraints and I have a word maximum which... I was only halfway there, but it wasn't flowing, so here we go. I definitely don't write grief well enough here, but I was kind of imagining Cedric to just block it out for now to deal with it later, keeping a calm mind for the most part. And this is partially based off of a small prompt I wrote for myself eons ago but haven't actually written yet.**_

_**For the most part, though, it's written for Assignment #5 - Mythology; Task 5: Use the phrase 'Even after death, there is another story to be told' in the fic or as inspiration. Here it was kind of used in both manners. It was written for the forum Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments).**_

* * *

Here is what they don't tell you: even in the afterlife—or whatever it is that comes after—the world smells like rain has sunk into the dirt. Except, maybe that's not quite right. Maybe it isn't so much the afterlife or something similar, but something completely different.

See—the last thing Cedric remembers is a green light and the hissed words that accompanied it. _Avada Kedavra._ People didn't survive that sort of thing. Harry Potter had, but he was Harry Potter—this sort of thing didn't happy to boys like Cedric Diggory who are, for the most part, utterly forgettable. Cho always tells him otherwise, but Cedric thinks that Cho is a bit biased. He isn't powerful or that smart. He's kind though, compassionate. He's always been proud of those traits.

Looking around, Cedric wonders where exactly he is. It's certainly someplace other than where had had been. Harry's no longer around and—he had been killed. He's certain of that much. Or maybe his rune work had actually done something. Tugging off his robes, Cedric pulls off his jumper.

In the middle of it, there's a massive lightning-bolt burnt into it. And the runes, which Cedric had painstakingly stitched in months past, had lost all their magic. He could no longer feel the humming of his magic reflected back at him—they are empty, useless.

They clearly did something though. Cedric didn't think this was death. The runes had been for protection and, if that failed, they were meant to invert the intention of the spell. The combination hadn't been made to stand up to the Killing Curse. And it left him here—in some field, empty.

"Hello!" Someone shouts from behind him. Cedric spins around, gripping his wand tightly in his hand. A woman approaches, wrinkles etched into her skin, stars chasing one another across her robes.

_A witch, then,_ Cedric concludes. Not that it matters, she might not be on his side—what side that is, though, he's not quite sure.

"Who are you?" He demands. And there's a time when he would be polite, but he should be dead and he clearly isn't and something is terribly, terribly wrong. "Where am I?"

"I'm Cassandra Vablatsky. Seer. You're perfectly on time, so don't fear." The woman stops in front of him. She's almost an entire head shorter than him but he can taste her magic tingling against his nerves. She's powerful but not—not dangerous, he doesn't think. Her magic feels fickle and stubborn yet strong.

"I'm Cedric Diggory," he says at last. "What do you mean about me being on time?"

Cassandra huffs and walks off, gesturing at him to follow. Since he's stuck in the middle of a field and has no idea where he is, he follows. "It took some time to figure out when you were meant to come—I saw it in a vision, perhaps seven months ago now. Cedric Diggory you say? There hasn't been a Diggory around for a while. Died back in the First War I do believe."

Cedric stops, shocked by the news. "Died?" He echoes faintly. "But I'm here, aren't I? Where is here?"

"Oh dear," Cassandra says. "I'm terribly sorry, I fear I've been doing this backward. But well, I fear I know even less than you. The cards, though, they said this: 'even after death, there is another story to be told'. Or, at least, that's how I interpreted them, which is the more important thing. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that you've slipped from one world to another entirely. It has been known to happen—rare, but this is one of the most common places that it happens. They say it's the weakest point between."

Cedric doesn't think he can actually think. His family dead? Surely not! He'd seen them only a few hours ago and the First War had certainly ended some years ago. And other worlds? The idea is preposterous. Except… except the runes tried to invert the Killing Curse and maybe partially succeeded. No one really knew what the Killing Curse did and you can't really do the opposite of kill someone, can you? That would be saving someone's life and that couldn't have happened as Cedric had been perfectly fine.

Swallowing, he asks, "Where are we? What… what day is it?"

Once upon a time, Cedric had been overly interested in how Harry could have survived where so many others had died. He'd done a lot of reading then, on the Killing Curse and various theories. One of the things that had stuck with him is that the Killing Curse only separated someone's spirit from their body, and with the mind no longer in the body, the body died.

Maybe Cedric had died, but not. Maybe the runes had tried to inverse the spell and failed and maybe the runes for protection had kicked in. Maybe the runes had brought him to another world. That isn't so far-fetched, when he thinks about it. There are stories of such things happening—of people disappearing and then reappearing and talking about other worlds.

"It's July of 1996 and You-Know-Who has just been brought back to life," Cassandra explains and her eyes are gentle.

His breathe catches in his throat. Merlin. You-Know-Who is alive. Cedric was killed in his own world. The Diggory Family doesn't exist in this world.

Considering all of this, Cedric is vaguely feeling like he wants to curl up in a ball and sob his heart out. But—if You-Know-Who is back, then there's a war going on. And Cedric isn't naïve enough to believe that a war doesn't need soldiers and Cedric might not be the most powerful or the smartest, but he can fight. So he bites down the breakdown that wants to hold onto his shoulders, locks his screams and sobs behind his teeth, and pushes everything down to a place where it sits curled behind his ribs.

"You're—I can't get back to my world, I don't think. I was meant to be killed. And- And you need soldiers for this war and I can fight. No one knows me either so I can- I can help!"

Cassandra stares at him. Measuring him up with her eyes. She tilts her head, cocks her hip out, and stares him down. "Kid, I'm over a hundred years and you're not ready to go out into a world you don't know yet. This doesn't even have to be your war, if you don't want it to be," she adds quietly.

Cedric sighs, the fight starting to slip out of him, and there's pressure building behind his eyes, but he doesn't want to think about that just yet—doesn't want to deal with it. "I can't not help," he says simply.

The witch nods like that's enough, and maybe for her it is. "Come with me," she says. "You can't just dive into any of these things, even if you're here now. Even if you can't get back."

* * *

Contrary to what he had thought, Cedric doesn't actually do much until it hits December and that's- that's understandable, Cassandra tells him. On his best days, Cedric believes her. On his worst, being kind to himself is the furthest thing from his mind.

It's hard, not having his family or his friends or Cho or anyone. His support system is non-existent, and it is Cassandra who helps him the best she can. It's not great and it's far from perfect, and it's hard more often than not. But Cedric is small and the world is much bigger than him. Sometimes, though, it feels as if grief is bigger than everything else.

So maybe it's not alright, but he lives and he keeps living. And when December hits, he leaves the house behind with a list of contacts in his head and a bunch of tricks up his sleeve. But he's still a child, not that it really matters, not in war. There are other kids out there who are already part of the war he knows. Even if the world is slightly different to his, it's still the same fundamentally.

Harry Potter defeated You-Know-Who the first time. He knows that the Triwizard Tournament also went ahead, but this time a Slytherin competed—Cassius Warrington—rather than Cedric. Because he didn't exist.

He's still getting his head around that one.

The point is that Cedric goes out there with his wand in his hand. And yeah, there's still grief wrapped tightly around his heart and something dark and heavy in his mind. But he's able to get up and keep moving.

He knows that there's a chance that he will die, that he hasn't really got any allies—yet. Yet being the key word. Because Cedric may not be the smartest or the most powerful, but he's kind. In war, that can be a weakness, but only if Cedric lets it be.

Kindness gets you places. Kindness helps you connect with people. And with some loyalty and some hard work, well, you can almost do anything. Cedric knows that for a fact. After all, that's how he ended up avoiding death in another world.


End file.
